HOW TO RIG A PEL­LET FEEDER FOR BARBEL

A The use of some types of smaller grubs has fallen by the way­side to such an ex­tent that many tackle shops no longer stock them. If you haven’t come across them be­fore here’s a short guide to the world of nat­u­ral grubs and what they of­fer the an­gler.

1. Mag­gots

The king of grubs and ar­guably angling’s great­est bait. Avail­able in a range of colours, al­though red and white tend to be the most pop­u­lar. Mag­gots are ex­cel­lent be­cause they take on flavours re­ally well.

2. Squatts

These tiny, quite in­ac­tive, mag­gots are bred from house­flies. Rarely seen in tackle shops or on the bank, they were once ‘the’ bait for the dis­cern­ing bream an­gler, with the be­lief that four red squatts on the hook would al­ways earn bites from bonus fish. Kept in damp sand to stop them dry­ing out and float­ing, their tor­pid na­ture makes them ideal for adding to ground­bait be­cause they don’t break up the balls.

3. Pinkies

Slightly larger, pinkies come from green­bot­tle flies. They get their name from the pale pink colour of their lar­vae. They are also ex­tremely ac­tive, wrig­gling twice as much as mag­gots, par­tic­u­larly in warmer weather. Much loved by roach an­glers, in larger bunches of five or six they are also ex­cel­lent for tar­get­ing big skim­mers, bream, tench and even carp.

4. Gozzers

Much softer and a lit­tle larger than stan­dard mag­gots, they have to be bred at home be­cause they are too dif­fi­cult to breed com­mer­cially. Pro­duced us­ing fly-blown chicken/pi­geon breast or pig’s heart, the fly lays its eggs on the meat.

1 2 3 Min­imise rig tan­gles by us­ing an an­ti­tan­gle sleeve to kick the hook­link well away from the feeder 4 Pass the hook­length’s free end back through the eye and pull tight to form a knot­less knot Form a small over­hand loop in one end of the hook­length. The loop should be about 8mm in di­am­e­ter Thread the hook­length through the eye of a size 10 Fang hook and make 10 turns around the shank Cut a 3ft-6ft length of abra­sion­re­sis­tant 8lb clear ny­lon or fluoro­car­bon for the hook­length 5 6 7 8 Pull the anti-tan­gle sleeve on to the rig swivel like this to fix it in place at the end of the hook­length Slide an anti-tan­gle sleeve on to the hook­length to re­duce tan­gles and pro­tect the line at the feeder Tie the hook­length to the rig swivel. Pass line twice through the eye for mono, once for flu­oro En­sure that the hair is long enough to leave a 5mm gap be­tween the hook bend and bait 9 10 11 12 When com­pleted, the rig should look like this. The hook­length is held away from the line and feeder Thread a buf­fer bead on to the main­line to pro­tect the swivel knot from be­ing dam­aged Tie the hook­length to the main­line us­ing a four-turn grin­ner knot. Wet knots be­fore tight­en­ing them Thread the feeder swivel on to the main­line. Use 10lb-12lb main­line, around 2lb more than the hook­link Feed­ers with stiffer con­nect­ing arms also con­trib­ute to an anti-tan­gle rig